There are moments when you realize that the modern digital world works beautifully — as long as your life fits perfectly into the system.
You live in your country of birth.
You have a utility bill in your own name.
Your full name is spelled exactly the same on every document.
You never move house during a verification process.
Click here. Upload there. Wait for confirmation. Done.
But when you are a Dutch citizen living in South Korea, things can suddenly become much more interesting.
All I wanted to do was simple: sell a few personal hobby items on eBay. No international trading empire. No complicated business structure. Just a few individual items.
For that, I had to verify my identity and address through Payoneer. Fair enough. Financial platforms need to know who they are dealing with. So I uploaded my documents.
My passport.
My Korean residence card.
An official document from the Dutch Tax Administration.
An official Korean proof of residence, stamped and issued by the local government.
You would think that should be enough.
But no.
My Dutch tax document is, of course, not a Korean document. Correct. I am Dutch and I still have tax obligations in the Netherlands. Also, the Dutch Tax Administration shows my name as “R. Kramer”, because Dutch official documents often use only the first initial of the first name. For a human being, this is perfectly understandable. For an automated system, apparently not.
Then there are the utility bills. They are not in my name, but in my wife’s name. Again, in my situation this is not strange. We live together in Korea, and the household contracts are in her name. But the system wants a utility bill in my name. And when that does not exist, the system simply keeps asking for it.
Then I uploaded an official Korean Certificate of Foreign Resident Registration. Name on it. Date of birth on it. Address on it. Issued by the Korean authorities. You would think this is stronger than an electricity bill.
But meanwhile, we moved.
Not because I wanted to make things complicated, but because the verification process took so long that life simply continued. My latest official document now shows my new address, while the system probably still expects my old address. And I cannot update the address myself, because my account is stuck in the verification process.
Welcome to the perfect digital loop.
You cannot change your address because you are not verified.
You cannot be verified because your address does not match.
You can explain why the address does not match, but then you are redirected back to the app.
The app asks again for documents that do not apply to your situation.
Then the real modern theatre begins: Customer Care.
The emails are friendly. Always friendly.
“We understand your frustration.”
“We are here to help.”
“Your case has been marked as priority.”
“No need to worry.”
But in practice, nothing essential changes.
You receive automatic reminders. You are asked to upload documents again. You receive polite replies that make you wonder whether anyone has actually read your previous messages carefully.
So you try to call.
The number shown looks like a local Korean 070 number. But the call is handled from somewhere else — in my case apparently via the Philippines. Poor audio quality. Weak English. A line that broke off several times in a row. Even when they called back, the call dropped again.
And there you are, in South Korea, with official documents from two countries, an eBay account that says you are almost ready to start, and a payment platform that keeps you trapped in an app that does not understand that real people sometimes live real lives.
The fascinating part is that nobody is really rude.
That almost makes it worse.
There is no angry employee. No clear refusal. Nobody saying: “Mr. Kramer, we simply cannot solve this.” Instead, you receive polite sentences, friendly apologies, and automated procedures. You are not rejected by a person. You are slowly ground down by a system.
And that system has one major weakness: it struggles with reality.
Because reality is messy.
People emigrate.
People are married.
Bills are sometimes in a partner’s name.
Tax authorities use initials.
Addresses change.
Documents differ from country to country.
An official Korean certificate does not look like a European utility bill.
And not every life fits into an upload screen with three standard options.
Of course I understand why companies use AI, apps and automated verification. It is cheaper, faster and scalable. For 90 percent of cases, it probably works perfectly.
But for the other 10 percent, the system does not become faster. It becomes slower, dumber and less human.
So the question is not whether AI and apps can be useful. Of course they can.
The question is: what happens when the app does not understand?
Is there still someone allowed to think?
Is there still someone who can actually read a document?
Is there still someone who can say: “Wait a minute, this situation actually makes sense”?
Or have we reached the point where humans are only allowed to explain what the software refuses to understand?
My problem is small on a global scale. I am not trying to open a bank for a multinational company. I am not building a complicated financial structure. I just want to sell a few personal hobby items on eBay.
But that is exactly why it feels so absurd.
If even something this simple gets stuck in an international verification machine, what does that say about the digital world we are increasingly forced to live in?
We call it customer service.
We call it verification.
We call it security.
We call it efficiency.
But sometimes it feels mostly like automated helplessness.
And somewhere inside that process sits a real person — in my case, a Dutchman in Korea — holding official papers in his hand, while an app says it is not good enough, a helpdesk says they understand, and the system continues with the same automatic request:
“Please upload proof of address.”
Sure.
Welcome to the future.
@Payoneer @eBay
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